Who doesn't know these two icons of science, Humboldt and Gauss? How Mount Chimborazo looks similar to the curvature of normal distribution! Who influenced whom?
But the real question is, why is this novel so popular in Germany? It was published in September 2005, and it is still number one on all bestseller lists. Germany has 80 million people, and by mid-July 2006, according to the British newspaper The Guardian, the book was sold 600,000 times, "knocking JK Rowling and Dan Brown off the top of the best-seller list". How many of these 600,000 books have really been read? What did those who actually finished the book get out of it?
Let us talk a bit about me: I am living in the city of Gauss, Göttingen (see skyline on banknote), where he is still revered, with an exhibition of his many scientific findings shown just recently. But I did not know too much about Humboldt, though several institutions in Germany are named after him.
This is a novel about two young scientists who live very intensely as young people, but when they get old they find that they had reached their peak at an early age. Many readers who feel they are leading a lukewarm life may be enchanted by the two scientists' energetic dedication to their worthy goals.
If you have to look abroad to find good contemporary literature because your local authors have let you down, then such a book is more than welcome.
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